Grocery List Made Easy

November 12, 2012

So, I have to share this little grocery shopping helper I have. I am always either eating or grocery shopping…oh, and cooking, but mostly eating and grocery shopping because my kids inhale things sometimes before I have a chance to cook them.

I hate when I sit down to make my grocery list and I am positively certain that I am forgetting something, or multipleh things. I hate, even more, when I belabor the task of grocery shopping, come home and realize that I forgot the two things I really, really needed. Toilet paper and tampons, anyone?!

I have restocked this little notepad numorous times in my house because I am not, by nature, a super organized person. That’s the excuse I keep using anyway. Hm…

Well, this little notepad is attached to a large magnet which hangs on my refrigerator and when I run out of something I mark it on my All Out Of notepad. I do this all week long and then I go through it and check a bunch of other things I want and need depending on what recipes I want to make that week and what toiletries my family needs.

This pad has all of the basics on it with extra blanks in each category to add things that are not already typed on the list that you might need.

The best part about this notepad is that it is organized in the same manner as the grocery store! So…when you are in the dairy section of the grocery store, you just look at the dairy section of your pad and you can see exactly what you need. This prevents the misfortune of shopping a section, dairy, let’s say, only to cruise 400 yards away to the toiletry section, all the while, hauling your brood of young’uns only to realize you forgot mozzerella cheese (heaven forbid!) With this handy little pad, I make sure I check all of my items while I am there the first time. Shoot, with this pad, I can check all of my items, recite the phonetic pronunciation of the entire alphabet to my 3 year-old, pick up the pacifier and give it a spit-shine (eww, gross), tell my 10 year-old 5, 367 times that we are not getting Lucky Charms, and my 12 year-old 2,314 times that she may not go to Sally’s house for a sneakover sleepover, and still walk out of the dairy section with my plain yogurt, greek yogurt, cottage cheese, ricotta, sour cream, 20 gallons of milk, kid cheese (think cheddar), adult cheese (think gorgonzola, fontina, and parmesan), butter, half and half, heavy cream, buttermilk, eggs (not dairy, but always in the dairy section–figure that one), and exactly 7% of my sanity (needed to drive us home, of course).

Needless to say, I am thankful. I am thankful that I stumbled upon this little pad one day in Urban Outfitters, long before I had kids and didn’t have a clue about heavy duty grocery shopping.

I am so thankful, that I thought I would share it with you.

I have no idea if Urban Outfitters still retails these bad boys, but I know you can get them here on Amazon. You can zoom in on the photo of the pad on Amazon to see what all is listed on the pad, which I recommend you do because it is a general list and does not have everything. The company that makes them has other cool check-list note pads that I like and use too, but this one is by far my favorite. This also makes a great gift for those people that are hard to shop for.